I am overwhelmed with sadness, guilt, shame, self loathing, and all that jazz. And covered, shrouded, engulfed by butterflies. Everywhere, they are just everywhere.
I’ve become Gideon.
Trying hard to just call the butterflies a myth, not real, imagined, not
from God – like I’m daring Him to skip a day and at the same exact moment
absolutely hoping He won’t.
Everything’s all jumbled and making no sense.
The list of all the ways I went wrong with Zach is a line around
the building kind of long. Peter MD
always asks me if I’m isolating. Yes, as
much as possible. It’s too hard to be
around people and “be” normal – like I will ever be normal again – I'm the self that mothered Zach into the grave.
I don’t want anyone’s opinion on how I should think differently or
better or Godly or holy or trusting or whatever the advice might be. Put my shoes on and then you can say whatever
you want. Otherwise, be quiet. Is this the angry, depressed, hopeless stage
of grief. Who cares.
There’s still a black worm hole in my mind where the
knowledge of what’s happened is hidden.
After almost 8 months, the almost time it took to grow Zach in my womb,
I still can’t connect what happened to real reality. Lately, the movie of that night is played
over and over and over in my brain like it happened to someone else but my mind
understands it happened to us but at the same time won’t believe that it
happened at all – when is Zach coming home? Your football jersey hangs empty, waiting. Come home.
So many can’ts in life now.
Can’t look at his photo. Can’t
sleep without dread dreams. Can’t help wanting and needing to isolate from
people. Can’t feel hope. Can’t talk
about it. Can’t socialize. Can’t listen to what others think I should or
should not do. Don’t care. Can’t know what I know to be true is
true. God. He’s true and real and alive. But right now I’m Gideon. Make the ground wet, and me dry. Rain on me, but keep the ground dry. One butterfly, 10 butterflies, a hundred, a
thousand, every every every day butterflies and still You must show me more. Show me it’s You. Tell me Zach is warm and cuddled and loved by a better love than I failed to give him. I want to know and believe and know.
When God knew how this parenting mothering would turn out,
why didn’t He give Zach to someone else?
Someone who could get it right.
Someone who could grow him all the way to grown-up. Mother’s day…and my son is dead. And
motherhood is so scary now. A mystery of
how to be different, squeeze out a different ending, fix what’s broken; with
Zach it’s too late. Too late. Forever too late for me to mother my son and
get it right. And my daughters – how do
I get it right with them? How does a
broken mother – mother? And they are
precious, and I love them with my whole self and do they know and feel and see
and hear that love? Zach on the floor - somehow, I did it all wrong. This mothering. Now, how do I get it right,
better, different, or is it the same? And if I
didn’t know with Zach, how can I know ever at all?
Right now I feel I deserve to feel a floundering failure,
hanging off the edge of a cliff, only air under my feet, barely clinging to a
life with a road ahead. Barely. So many times in reliving the life history of
my life’s mistakes, I wondered if God would punish me by taking my child or
children. I shared this with another
mother who shared the same feelings with me.
Is this punishment because it sure doesn’t feel like grace unless the
grace is for Zach and God saving him from me.
If this is self pity, I don’t know how to not ask these questions; I don’t know how to stop my mind careening
dangerously around the bends of my life to arrive at a place where I am
okay. And only God can do it but is He
even there and are the butterflies just my wish that He is really real and Zach
is really there and this is really working together for good. Isn’t that ridiculous to imagine – that a
mother’s son is dead and that’s working toward some good? His ways, God's ways, are not my ways. His thoughts are not my thoughts. My thoughts are deeply dark and just
sad. Sad.
Would I be thinking a different way if Zach had gone some
other way? I don’t wear those shoes so
how can I know? How can I know another
mother’s grief when I can’t even decipher my own? Sad.
Ugly. Dark.
Maybe there is one other person this writing might help or
ease the aloneness and sorrow over the too lateness, the unchangeable, the
endless why’s and what if’s. No matter
how much it is said, no matter how much others wish it to not be so, I know
that if Zach had been given another mother, a better mother, a different
mother, that night wouldn’t be the nightmare.
And if I’d known, would I have given him up to that mother to change the ending - like the mother who gave her babe to keep him from being cut in half. Could I be that mother? How would a mother give up a son, but I do
want a different ending, a different mother, a mother who could’ve known and
helped and saved. I wasn’t
different. I didn’t know. I didn’t help. I didn’t save. Another mother I wasn’t. I am just me and it wasn’t enough. And how do I live with that? How do I keep taking steps? Michael, Taylor, Madison.
Step…step…step…faltering step by step.
Isn’t truth that things have to continue the down spiral to
bring the Savior back to gather us to Himself.
I don’t want a better world. I
don’t want the tides to turn. I want to
be swept up into the bosom of Christ and end this nightmare – seeing Zach in
the light of the Lord’s face to face.
Trudge onward Christian soldier.
Wounded, bleeding, hopeless, toward the Hope that will heal. Trudge on.
When will it be well with my soul?
Trudge on. Lord make it so.
Lord, why? Why has this happened to us?
No comments:
Post a Comment